Category Archives: turkey and turkey hunting

The Bruce Peninsula

March 13, 2011 Shawn West 2 Comments

I can’t wait for the next six weeks to crawl by so that I can ‘go north’. And in my somewhat narrow perception of the term, I’m referring to a sojourn that will take me north up Highway #6 for a little over three hours to the village of Lion’s Head. Lion’s Head is, to be brief, a pretty little hamlet found on the Georgian Bay (read, eastern) side of the Bruce Peninsula. If you use Owen Sound as your southernmost reference point and Tobermory as your northernmost point, Lion’s Head is about halfway up…and not four feet from the lion’s tail for you jokesters out there.

As an aside, I know that those of you who are reading this in Subdury, Cochrane, South Porcupine, or Thunder Bay will snort and tell me that I have no clue about what north ‘really’ is, and you’re right. In fact, I spend the second week of the November deer rifle hunt at slightly higher latitude, relative to Lion’s Head, just north of Seguin Falls. Neither are the high Arctic, but certainly both have a different environment and yes, even climate, than the mix of pastoral plains and generally urban/suburban areas that I see down here in Southwestern Ontario. In a tongue in cheek fashion I’d retort that residents of Thunder Bay, ON do not understand the hardships to be found further north in say Churchill, Manitoba (polar bears anyone?), but I digress as this is not a post about geographical perceptions of climate or hardship.

The village of Lion’s Head serves as the launching point for my “adventures in hunting” (which, by the way, was the alternate working title for this blog…I made my choice though and I’m happy with it). The farm where my father and uncles grew up is the home base from which I can head to any number of sites to chase after, and usually find myself defeated by, wild game. Someday I’ll evolve into a competent photographer and have some photos that illustrate the unique beauty of this area, but for now let me take you on a virtual tour through some hunting stories alone.

As a pre-emptive defense, a lot of the places I’m about to mention don’t have much value in the way of ‘tourist’ spots. If you’re looking for me to gush about The Grotto or something like that, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’ve been there (The Grotto) and it is beautiful, but I can’t even swim so it holds no real allure to me. Same goes for Tobermory; been there (both in the high tourist season of July when it is as crowded as a Hollywood nightclub, and in the off-season when a lot of the stores aren’t even open for business during the week) and done that. It is another great Bruce Peninsula destination but not a place where I can go hunting, so I’ll leave the point at that. Restaurant reviews and shopping destinations will be fairly thin on this post (although I will say that the Farmer’s Breakfast at Mom’s Restaurant in Ferndale is an absolute must).

My first exposure to hunting came in a village north of Lion’s Head known as Cape Chin South, so that’s where I’ll start.

On a cool Thanksgiving weekend when I was eight years old, I awoke in the darkness early on Saturday morning and went goose hunting with my Dad. I remember being bundled up like Ralphie’s brother Randy from A Christmas Story as I was wearing, to mention just a few of the items, long underwear, sweatpants, lined work pants that were a couple of sizes too big, and a wool sweater. I had my Wellington boots on and my feet were wrapped in toasty wool socks. Wool mitts and a grey toque completed the ensemble. There was no way that I was going to get cold and want to come home early.

But most of all I remember the much-too-large olive drab hunting coat that my Dad put on me. I imagine that to an invisible observer there was one of those tender, paternal, very Rockwellian scenes as my Dad helped me into the coat and zipped it up to my chin. While I lacked mobility and dexterity (and frankly, I still kind of do now over 20 years later), I recall the key benefit of this particular coat being that it was big enough for me bury my whole face into it if I got cold.

And despite all the preparations, I still got cold. Did I mention that this hunt pre-dated the common use of padded foam seats, and ‘Heat-a-Seats”? It did. Dad jammed a black garbage bag into my pocket that would serve to keep my derriere dry, but it was lacklustre in keeping my little tush warm.

We got out of the car and walked into the field in the grey, beetling morning before I was sat down in the nooks and crannies of a rock pile that had a bunch of old cedar rails piled up around, and upon, it. They did a very good job of breaking up the human outline, and with the addition of a half-dozen shell body decoys we were ready for the goose hunting to commence. I can’t recall how many geese flew around that day, but it was by no means a huge flight. In fact I can only recall one small bunch of three of four. Dad pulled an old Olt goose call out of his pocket and began to cluck away on it a bit and the birds circled before coming in to land with our fakes.

So long as I’m able to remember, I’ll never forget those geese hanging in the air, as big as jetliners, with their feet down ready to land. Dad took a double with his Remington 1100, although he missed a third with his last shot, and laid the geese in the rocks by my feet. A short, gooseless while later Dad decided that two birds were enough and we headed back to the car. Dad carried a goose, an old feedbag with the decoys in it, and his shotgun. I got the honour of carrying out the other goose. I bumped and dragged that poor goose’s head through the grass for some ways before Dad turned around and told me to pick the goose’s head off the ground and treat the game a little better. My eight-year-old biceps got quite the work out; I think I held that bird’s head almost above my knees the rest of the way to the car. Since then I’ve hunted waterfowl all around Lion’s Head; in the Ferndale Flats, at Spry, and in Dyer’s Bay to name a few spots in weather that ran from balmy early September hunts in t-shirts to chilly mid-November pursuits in driving snow. Still, that young boy’s first hunt on a Thanksgiving Saturday in Cape Chin hooked me in.

In the same area as Cape Chin South are Otter Lake and Cape Chin North, and this area is where the family deer hunting takes place during early November. My Dad wrote a fine piece about Otter Lake for the Chatham-Kent Times, so I won’t pretend to best that. Instead, I’ll just talk about deer hunting.

In 1995 at a rangy, awkward fifteen years old I found myself sitting on a blown down birch log at 6:30 in the morning with a Remington Model 14 pump action rifle across my lap. I was in the wooded uplands just west of Otter Lake waiting for deer. I didn’t have any calls or experience, but as a first-time deer hunter the camp elders had seen fit to place me in a reasonably good spot near some known deer runs. At around 8am my great uncle Bower came around and checked on me; he said he’d return in about an hour. At ten minutes to nine I heard some crunching in the leaves behind me and turned to see Bower. Instead I saw that a doe and a fawn were loping down the ridge and towards me! As a party we had two or three antlerless tags, including one that I had been fortunate to draw in my first year of deer hunting and I slid the safety off, raised the rifle and fired at the doe as she bounded quartering away from my right. She never broke stride but the fawn crossed me broadside at fifteen yards. The rifle barked again and the fawn went down after some stumbled leaps. Then everything was silent. I hadn’t had time to be nervous before, but I was in the moments immediately after the drama I was shaking, elated, sad, proud, and a little nauseous. Yes, the first-time deer hunter speeds rapidly through a broad range of emotions after their first successful hunt.

I now hunt deer a bit in the Parry Sound district, and I have had offers for some hunts in the Elmira area not too far from home, but I always make sure that I get time in every November at the Otter Lake camp. I’ve shot a couple other deer in those hardwood uplands since, including one in 2009 that I shot at nearly the same time of day while sitting in basically the spot. That fallen birch has long since rotted away though.

I’ve turkey hunted all over the North Bruce in Dyers Bay, Lion’s Head, Barrow Bay, Ferndale, and Cape Chin (North and South) but I have not yet managed to connect on a Bruce Peninsula gobbler, despite some close calls. That terrible record notwithstanding, these treks have taken me through some of the prettiest country I have ever walked in. The verdure of the spring as it comes to life around you is something special to behold everywhere, but the ridges, fields, and hardwood bottoms of the Bruce seem to do it better than anywhere else I’ve been to date. For me when I think of turkey hunting I picture sitting in the sun-dappled hardwoods of Cape Chin or watching the dew form on the balsams south of the farm in Lion’s Head with a soft Georgian Bay breeze blowing in around me.

Winter on the Bruce, in my experience, is like winter anywhere else and by that I mean that it is variable to a fault.

Some years it is bitterly cold, other years it is buried in deep snow, and one notable year it was so mild that we hunted rabbits in January with no snow on the ground at all. The rabbits showed up neon white against the browns and grays of the woods, their fur coats having already changed colour with the photoperiod. Despite this advantage for us we still had a tough time shooting these little escape artists and only managed to take a couple of them home to the larder. By contrast, during a coyote hunt almost exactly a year later, it was so cold that the thermometer outside the farm bottomed out, while the outside temperature for the morning hunt (at least according to my cousin’s truck console) was -27 degree Celsius. I’ve been out on snowy days on the Bruce where visibility was basically nil, while on other January days, although snow was on the ground, it was so warm that one could hunt without wearing a jacket, especially if you were exerting yourself.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective I guess, I haven’t hunted any public land in the Bruce Peninsula. This is primarily because I am the beneficiary of a family tradition of hunting in the area (which I am trying to honour and maintain as the older generation might one day step aside), family held land in some locations, and a network of friends on the Bruce who put up with my nonsensical metaphors, interminable stories, and sometimes hilarious ineptitude.

Despite the occasionally misguided attempts of some to bring what they feel is urbanization and their skewed views of ‘civilization’ to the area, I have found that the hunting ethic, as part of the rural outdoors ethic at large, is still strong on the Bruce Peninsula where it is a tradition built on personal relationships, respect for the resource and the landowners, and a history where hunting played a vital role in survival for the ancestors of the longer-term residents of the area. I think that those are the keys to any place where you love to hunt, or fish, or camp, or hike, or whatever it is that you do to get out and enjoy nature and the wilderness.

For this particular observer historical tradition, camaraderie and shared enjoyment in the outdoors all make up the fundamental appeal of hunting as a pastime. In my mind, the Bruce has all of the above and more.

turkey and turkey hunting

The Pines Gobbler Revisited

March 8, 2011 Shawn West Leave a comment

After laying probably the worst beat on me ever in 2009, I was really hoping that the Pines Gobbler had made it through the winter and survived into 2010.

With almost no time to scout the location in 2010, and having already endured the most miserable ‘May 1^st weekend” weather I had ever seen, I made my way hopefully north to the familiar hunting grounds of the Bruce Peninsula for the weekend of May 8^th, 2010. I had asked around and no one had seen the Pines Gobbler or another big tom matching his description, and a friend of mine had permission to hunt the property ahead of me anyways so with a tinge of melancholy I gave up the big tom for dead, or at least that he had found other, less obvious places to hang out. Besides, at the time I worked with a woman who had a family cottage in the same area I was hunting in and she had said something to me which made me tingle with anticipation.

“You know the property along the main highway there, the one with the green steel roof on the homestead?” I said that I did know that property, and that I knew the man who owned it as well. “Well I was driving up to open the cottage last weekend, and I saw about a dozen turkeys in that front field, right at the back against the trees.”

When I asked her if she saw any big ones strutting, she said that they all looked pretty big from the width of a pasture field away, at which point I realized that to a non-hunter pretty much any turkey looks ‘big’. I was heartened and worried simultaneously (any avid turkey hunter knows this feeling) because if she had seen them, certainly others, and most definitely someone with a mind to hunt the birds, had seen them as well.

I called the landowner that night. He said no one had approached him for permission and that I was free to go in and hunt turkeys in that property if I wanted to. Things were coming together and with no proof that the Pines Gobbler was even alive, I focused my energies on the next challenge.

There is a finger of field that runs just behind the place where my co-worker had seen the birds, and it seemed to me a place that just had to have turkeys nearby; it was isolated and hidden from the road, but close enough to the last reported sighting to be well within earshot. I drove in on a very dark morning, just behind a passing thunderstorm and found a large turkey track in the dirt road while walking in. Buoyed, I sat in the “V” of a very damp, very mossy, very old cedar rail fence overlooking a wedge of field not more than 70 yards across. My Flambeau hens, one feeder, one upright, stood 20 steps away, looking first like gloomy blobs in the dark, then morphing into grey shadows, and then coming into focus under the break of a steely gray morning.

The thunderstorm rumbled in protest as the wind moved it southeast, but the low, hazy dawn persisted behind it and I was to have no sunshine that morning. The weather was strange. It was not quite fog, and it was not quite drizzle, it was just that kind of cold clammy dampness that gets into everything and makes your pot calls run funny. My box call was waterproof though, and I gave some light yelps just at fly down, with no answer. At around 7am I cranked up the volume a bit and just before 8am a gobble cut off a series of aggressive cuts from my mouth call. The bird was in front of me, but I could not precisely tell where the tom was. He never showed himself and never spoke again. After two hours I left wet, bedraggled, and frustrated. On my way out I was fortunate enough to sneak within 100 yards of some Sandhill Cranes performing their courtship dance, which is truly one of nature’s most elegant forms of entertainment, a bit like a wildlife ballet, but that single distant gobble haunted my thoughts on the drive back to the farm.

No one else in our little group of hunters had connected that morning (most had heard the thunder and did not even bother going out) so as is our habit, we had breakfast and planned an afternoon of running and gunning. The plan was simple: drive to places where we had permission to hunt, get quietly out of the truck, make a whole bunch of turkey racket, and hopefully get a hot tom to come for a visit. Our batting average over the years is right around .500 with that tactic so we must be doing something right. A wicked wind picked up while we were eating and threatened to spoil our plan. Our solution was to do it anyways, just with louder and longer calling.

The first three stops netted no answer, so we went into a spot close to where I had my 2009 run in with the Pines Gobbler, but as I said, I had put that mean old bird out of my mind. Allegedly a gaggle of jakes had taken up residence there, and I was hungry for some turkey tenders so I was not fussy on punching my tag with a short-bearded bird.

My cousin, my brother, my good friend, and I all stepped out of the truck and let slide with a chorus of yelps and cuts that sounded like some sort of enticingly violent turkey orgy. It worked. Not one, not two, but three lusty turkeys answered our pleas. With the wind blowing high it was tough to say how far they were, but when they gobbled again seconds later with no provocation it was obvious that they were running to meet us.

Jakes. It had to be those jakes.

We softly closed truck doors, slid some shells into shotguns, and my brother and I hastily sat down next to each other at a junction where one trail became two. My cousin and friend, unarmed and not at all interested in shooting jakes, sat ten yards in back of us behind a knoll. They kept pouring on the hen music. The birds were gobbling to my right and coming hard, so I turned slightly that way and bore down on the stock of my 870. My brother was to my left with his gun barrel pointed directly at the fork in the trail. I had about twenty yards of space between me and an impenetrable blow down so the hope was that the birds would come between the blow down and myself and then perhaps offer my brother a shot in the subsequent turkey panic.

Now, before I go further, here’s a point that every turkey hunter (if they don’t know it already) needs to understand. Whatever you think a turkey might do, he will invariably do the opposite. If you try to get clever and purposely do the opposite of what you think a turkey might do so as to double-bluff the gobbler, he’ll do what you initially thought he would but didn’t account for. Either way, you’ll almost always need to adapt or fail.

In this case I failed. The birds found the open trail and hightailed it down to the fork…a path that took them right down my brother’s barrel. To make matters worse, before I could see the birds I heard the unmistakeable Pffft….voooooom of a turkey spitting and drumming. These were not jakes.

I could just see glimpses of the birds, but all three were strutting up the road on my left to my brother. They gobbled so loudly that I thought their heads were fixing to fall off; one of the gobbles put me in mind of a bad beat I had suffered at the hands of a wily tom in the same area last year.

I was right, and I heard him before I saw him, but there was no question of who it was. When I did finally see him, mere seconds before my brother dispatched one of the other satellite toms, there was no doubt in my mind that the Pines Gobbler lived. He was the last of the three strutters and though I could not swing around to shoot him without spooking the lot of them, with my eyes cut left I could see clearly that thick beard and one big spur on his leading foot. And that voice, God that voice. I said I’d never forget it, and I hadn’t.

When my brother’s 870 barked the lead gobbler began flopping and digging his head into the trail while the Pines Gobbler and his consigliere fled straight away back from where they had come. I leapt up but was only privy to two black blurs speeding away and even though I knew my pattern was good out to fifty yards, a running poke at such a bird was never on my mind.

It was a hunt that none of the four of us will ever forget, and while I was very happy for my brother, I was also insatiably hungry to match wits with the Pines Gobbler again. We left to weigh and dress out my brother’s two-year old bird, but also to let the spot cool down; when I came back for the evening sit I heard not a whisper of a turkey there. The same was true of the next morning stand. Family commitments saw me unable to hunt the afternoon shift that Sunday (gun-hunting is permitted in that Wildlife Management Unit on Sundays) but while reliving that run and gun hunt on the drive home I resolved to get back and have one more crack at the Pines Gobbler for 2010.

The next weekend I was indisposed and could not muster a hunt, and the next Saturday on the Victoria Day holiday weekend I hunted around the Barrie area, but the birds seemed to have had lockjaw in that part of the province.

Closing weekend came slowly and my work-week (and five restless nights) teemed with nothing other than visions of getting a chance to close the deal on that bad boss gobbler. I took the Friday afternoon off so that I could do a quick evening’s scouting before the morning hunt, but the bird was not in any of his old haunts, nor did he answer my crow and hawk calls in the vicinity of where I had last seen him. No one had reported sighting him, but no one had likewise reported shooting a bird of his stature, so I was pretty sure he was still out there, in hiding, and just being ornery with me. To top it off it was drizzling, with no sign of it improving until mid-day on Sunday…a Sunday, that by the way, was the final day of the season.

Driving slowly down a muddy road, feeling sorry for myself and resigned to just going back to the same spot where I had last seen him last, I slammed on the brakes. There was a turkey track on the soft shoulder of the road. It looked big, but it was also a little washed out. I got out of the car and looked closer at it. The track crossed the road into a cedar stand near a hydro cut that I had hunted rabbits in more times than I could remember. I knew just where I would set up in there: a small clearing about 30 yards wide and 50 yards long flanked by thick cedars and the hydro cut on the south side and open hardwoods out to the north and east. I crow called hopefully, wishing for that heavy, gravel-shaken-in-a-tin-can gobble to ring out, but still I received no response.

Yet this track was the only turkey sign I’d seen that whole afternoon while scouting, so I really only had one option. Hunt the bird that I hoped had made that punch in the mud.

I got up at an ungodly hour that Saturday morning and in the wet, dripping darkness walked for fifteen minutes to the clearing. I was soaked by the time I put out both my hen decoys, and for the hell of it (and because I was desperate) I put out a Flambeau “Intruder Jake” decoy as well. I pruned myself a bower under a sopping wet hummock of balsams, sat down, and waited for fly down time. I almost chewed my mouth call to pieces with anticipation. I checked my watch and at the appropriate time I tried to slide my Federal Mag-Shok #6s into the action of my 870 as smoothly and as quietly as possible. Later, but probably still a little too early, I purred and tree-yelped softly. Instantly, and from behind me, a tom turkey roared back. I should have been happy but I wasn’t.

I was set up close, way too close. Think “twenty yards away from his roost” too close. Now maybe I should have owl-called before I got that close to my stand, or maybe I should have slunk further away when he gobbled, but I was in a predicament just then and paralyzed with indecision. Mostly I just sat there praying that the wet ground had muffled my approach and that the metallic’ snick-snick’ of me loading my gun had not sounded like a gong to this bird. I hoped because from that one gobble there was no question that it was the bird I wanted.

He gobbled again and again on the roost, but I was determined not to yelp back. He was already way too close and most certainly knew I was there. Every gobble tied me in knots: this was the bird that beat me so badly twelve months before, just across the road from where he was roosted. I didn’t want revenge from my 2009 debacle because, as Moby Dick has shown us, wildlife has no concept of spite, pride, or vengeance. I just wanted a chance to best this wise old tom at his own game because that’s part of the challenge and allure of turkey hunting. I heard him fly down and gobble on the ground, but he was going away from me. He got quieter and quieter as he marched further and further away. I begged him to come back over and over, and once in a while he did return a few steps back to me, but never all the way. I was going to have to move.

I pulled up my decoys and set them under the balsams. I threw some of the boughs that I had pruned to make my stand on top of them and decided to make a wide circle around the gobbler. I unloaded my gun to head up the road in an effort to get in front of this bird, and I’ll tell you I’ve never had that “Murphy’s Law” feeling more acutely than I did right then. With my shotgun in one hand and three shotgun shells in the other I was almost certain that this cagey old turkey would suddenly materialize on the road in front of me while I had an empty gun, or that he’d gobble behind me and I’d turn to see him looking at me from backtrail.

The paranoia of a turkey hunter chasing a hidden, silent gobbler is nearly unmatched. My neck was sore from all the turning around to look over my shoulder.

Finally I got to where I thought I would be in front of the bird. I reloaded and cut hard on my box call. He answered, and he started coming my way, gobbling constantly. Then I saw him. He was winnowing his way through some low gads and saplings; he was hot and in half-strut. I thought about my decoys under the cedars and half-wished I’d brought a confidence hen. There was no where that I could get a clear shot until he was within 20 steps or so, and he never even came that close. He had to have seen something he didn’t like (because I was a living statue…for once) and he folded up and started half-trotting away to my right.

When he went behind a tree, I tried to twist my body to the right for a shot. If you are a right-handed shooter like I am, you know how difficult and uncomfortable this can be, and frankly, I’m not what you would call ‘limber’. He didn’t putt so I don’t think he saw me, but shortly he disappeared. Again I sang on the box call; no answer. I went into a fighting purr routine with my mouth diaphragm fifteen minutes later. Nothing. He had been gone for half-an-hour and I was sitting there quietly with my gun half-raised on my knee when he gobbled so near to me that I thought he was going to peck my ear off; to say he startled me is an understatement.

He was behind me again, but the next gobble told me he was coming around to my left. I slowly raised the gun and cut my eyes to the side; there he was. This time he was doing that ultra-slow turkey stalk. He was spooked and frankly so was I. Sliding the safety off, I needed him to take five steps into an opening and miraculously it looked like he was finally going to oblige me. My mind was racing; the moment was finally at hand. And then I did it.

I screwed it up.

Preparing to shoot, I lowered my cheek way down and pulled the butt of the gun even more tightly into my shoulder. Milliseconds later I would have pulled the trigger, but he saw that movement and in a flurry of putting and shock gobbling the big tom half-sprinted, half-flew out sight.

It was the closest I’ve come to crying while turkey hunting. I swore. I said horrible things about myself out loud to any tree that would care to listen. I cursed the Pines Gobbler, wild turkeys everywhere, and turkey hunting in general. Then I moped back to where this had all started, stuffed my decoys in their bag and trudged back to the farm. Halfway back across the big front field, I heard the bird again. He was a way across the road, back in his safe pines. He was gobbling. It sounded to me, at that moment, like triumphant laughter.

After a very quiet, very pensive lunch I put in a half-hearted attempt to hunt the gobbler that afternoon. After all, I knew where to find him, but I was also beaten down. Although he gave me a momentary thrill when he marched half-way across a field towards me, my hopes were ultimately dashed when he skirted me by 100 yards and crossed the road. I roosted him and the next morning I set up on him again in the very early hours. I even owl-called to avoid setting up too close to him, but he never made a peep and all I saw that morning was a small red fox that was stalking my decoy setup. I mouse-squeaked the charcoal-footed little fox to within eight steps but he caught my scent when the wind changed and he bolted like his tail was on fire. This cheered me up a bit because I like the antics of red foxes and see no real reason to shoot one that isn’t causing any trouble in the henhouse.

So that’s how a two year odyssey with the Pines Gobbler stands to date. Again, so far as I know, no one shot him and he just has the weather, the coyotes, and the traffic on the county roads to survive this winter. I swore to my wife that if I run into this bird again I am just going to live and let live and not even bother hunting him; he’s obviously far superior to me in every way, and to be honest my self-esteem simply cannot take another spring flogging.

I just hope that if I do happen hear that gobbler doing his raspy, angry shouting, and see his puffed up tilt-a-whirl strutting routine that I can help myself.

Odds are I won’t be able to.

game calls, hunting gear, turkey and turkey hunting

Confessions of a Turkey Hunting Gearhead—Part Two

March 2, 2011 Shawn West Leave a comment

Having covered the apparel and outerwear aspects of what I take into the turkey woods, let’s talk about the fun stuff: equipment, ordnance, and accessories.

As I said in the earlier post on this topic, I take an unbelievable amount of equipment with me when I go turkey hunting; the challenge is deciding what to use and when. Sometimes you have to just go with what is working on a given day, and other times I find that I need to switch tactics and be agile.

Shotgun, Choke, and Shells

The item I can say that I use the least is perhaps the most important; my shotgun. I carry my first shotgun with me into the field every season. It is a Remington 870 Express chambered for 3” shells. I received it for Christmas many years ago when it became apparent that I was going to take up hunting. It was the best Christmas ever.

Last year I broke down and bought a new aftermarket synthetic stock and fore-end from Remington in a Mossy Oak Break-Up pattern. I had previously experimented with a variety of other camouflage options, including the no-mar gun stock tape that many retailers sell. In my experience, even after following the package instructions meticulously the tape left residue on my gun. Clean up of this residue was lengthy and at the expense of some very minor damage to the finish of the factory stock and fore-end, so I decided that in the name of convenience to make the switch. I’ve attached a Rhino-Rib sling from Kolpin as well.

I find that my shotgun patterns Federal’s 3’ 1 ¾ ounce #6 Mag Shok shells with the Flitestopper wad the best. Using BassPro Shops Redhead turkey pattern board I found that at 40 yards I still had slightly over 90% coverage in a 30” circle, with no major holes or gaps in the pattern. This all comes out the business end of my 870 through a Hunter’s Specialties Undertaker extra-full choke tube. I got lucky in a way because I chose this set up arbitrarily and it just so happened to work out. Since I’m not a competition shooter and don’t really feel inclined to stretch my gun out past 40 yards at turkeys (although I’d have at least two more birds in the bag historically if I felt differently about that) I have not had to spend additional money on testing a variety of choke/ammunition combinations.

Calls

This is my favourite part of turkey hunting. I love owning calls, practicing on them, becoming semi-proficient at them, and then using them in the field. One thing that will become immediately apparent below is that I show no brand loyalty in my calls. I own calls out of necessity, obsession, and based on what I think sounds the best. Your choices may, and likely will, differ from mine.

I went about turkey calling all backwards when I decided to get into the sport. Almost all turkey publications and turkey gurus (self-professed or otherwise) would recommend that a beginner start out on a box call, a simple push-pin style call, or a the most a single-reed mouth call. I can say that I agree wholeheartedly, primarily because I, in true masochist style, suffered for a year of trying to master a raspy four-reed Old Boss Hen mouth call from Quaker Boy that barely fit in my mouth. I ended up trimming the tape and finally found a good fit. Luckily the year in question was the year before I went out and got my turkey licence, so by the first day I went afield I had gotten pretty good with it. The year after that I bought a four pack from Hunter’s Specialties that also had to be trimmed to fit. Once I had the sizing down, they worked really well, and I called my first turkey in to 25 yards with an HS clear double-reed.

Right now I carry four mouth diaphragms. Three of them are from Knight & Hale because I find that those fit my palette most comfortably without requiring the tape to be trimmed. I carry a clear double-reed, which I find is good for soft tree-yelping and plain yelps; it is also a call that I can crank the volume on indefinitely and this versatility makes it the one call that I most likely have between cheek and gum for most of the season. I also carry one Knight & Hale triple-reed call and another four-reed, both with various cuts and notches. The four-reed has a bat-wing cut and I like it for calm days when volume is not as much of a concern but long-distance cutting is my priority. The triple reed has a V-cut and it has a higher pitch for slightly windier days. I also find that I can purr like a fiend on this call, so when I want to switch things up and throw a fighting purr sequence in my calls, I pop this one in.

The fourth call is a M.A.D. calls Billy Yargus Signature Series four-reed cutter call that a friend won and subsequently donated to me, although I almost never use it. It is plenty raspy, and I did use it in a competition in 2010, but it is just slightly too large for the roof of my mouth. On the plus side, this call is ideal for gobbling on so I do carry it in my vest in case I find that one day when I need to gobble challengingly to a hung up gobbler (safely and on private land of course).

I carry a Primos Wet Box box call and cannot say enough good things about it. I only have limited hunting days in a year, primarily because I don’t live in a rural area and the landowners immediately near my house in Cambridge, Ontario are not fussy on allowing permission to people who show up at their door in February or March. This all means that I’m travelling to hunt so if it is raining, I’m still going out in basically any weather short of a full-on thunderstorm. I’m not fussy on chalking box calls and then putting them in Wonderbread bags so I picked up this waterproof box call, and waterproof is an understatement. This call has been so soaked that I thought it would float away, and through it all it has never slipped or squeaked once. I’m not famous enough to have a binding endorsement deal with anyone (Hello, Primos? Call me…) but I would certainly recommend this call to anyone.

In 2009 I finished second in the men’s open division at the Strathroy Great Canadian Turkey Call and won, as part of a large bag of swag, a Quaker Boy Trifecta friction call and a Quaker Boy Easy Yelper push pin call. The push-pin is great for close in finishing work to any gobblers that I know can’t see me. It took some off-season practice but I can now run this call in my left hand while having my shotgun ready. If I was more mechanically inclined I’d probably rig up some pull-string contraption and affix it to my shotgun’s fore-end, but I’m not so I haven’t.

The Trifecta has three surfaces (aluminum, slate, and ‘cordy’) that all make different tones when played. I found the factory striker that came with it was a bit of a uni-tasker so I picked up a three-pack of strikers from Primos. I find that each works best with a specific surface (aluminum surface/acrylic striker, slate surface/purple heart striker, etc) but what I like best is the option to make many different turkey sounds with one call. I lost the small square of conditioning paper that came with the call so I use a medium/fine-grit sand paper to rough up the surfaces of the strikers and the call. In 2010 I finished third in the same contest (clearly my calling skills are on the decline) and only won Quaker Boy mouth calls, which as I said don’t really fit my mouth very well. I used them as Christmas gifts for some hunting buddies…my wife refused to accept them as her stocking stuffers.

In terms of locator calls…let’s just say that I may have become a victim of marketing. I have three locator calls, all of which have never worked once. The HS Palmer’s Hoot Tube sounds just as it should. Just for fun last year I used it on a squirrel that was puttering around my set up: the squirrel’s reaction was one of the funniest things I had ever seen and reinforced my knowledge that it in fact did sound like a barred owl. No early morning turkeys have responded to my owling though.

My Primos Old Crow call does a great job of calling crows, but to date has not made a single turkey gobble, even when I know there is one nearby. Most frustratingly, after I’ve called in crows, I’ve had turkeys shock gobble at the real thing, but not my imitations. Can’t say my self-esteem wasn’t a bit dented by that.

I bought a Quaker Boy Screaming Hawk call that also has done nothing except call in Red-Tailed hawks. I used it once on public land in the Simcoe County Forests near a Northern Goshawk nest. Big mistake; I’m lucky to still have a scalp.

I have so far resisted the temptation to buy any gobble-shaker calls, gimmicky hen-calling contraptions, or anything so handcrafted and expensive (think very attractive exotic wood pot calls or box calls) that if I lost it I would need to consider filing an insurance claim on it in order to recoup my financial losses. But I’m still young, give it time.

Accessories

The following items all find their way into my turkey vest at one time or another throughout the season: water bottles, handheld pruners, camera, small headlamps, and sunglasses. In terms of accessories I only have three mainstays.

The first is my knife, or more accurately, two knives. I have a classic Buck 110 folding lockback knife that was a gift for my 15^th birthday; just in time for deer season. It is a timeless piece of cutlery and it has done everything for me from notching out tags and cleaning waterfowl to gutting and skinning deer to taking the beard and tail fan off a turkey. It is as sharp as ever and a large scar on my left thumb from skinning a buck in 2008 is testament to that. If it has one knock on it, it is that it is slightly too long for most turkey hunting applications. With that in mind in 2009 I bought a Gerber LST drop point that is slick as all get out for precision jobs. Like the Buck 110 it is also wickedly sharp, but I know that my clumsy hands will one day lose it in the forest because it is camouflage patterned. At least I won’t be surprised at this eventuality.

The next is a small blaze orange wallet that holds all my necessary licenses, registrations, permits, tags, and identification. I usually wrap this in a small zip-top baggie because I want to keep it dry before I bury it in some godforsaken pocket in my vest for the season. This is obviously of vital importance, and the color reflects my fear of losing it.

Lastly are my decoys. I bought a Flambeau Breeding Flock set in 2008 at the Toronto Sportsman’s Show consisting of two hens and one jake. The hens are upright and feeding respectively, while the jake is frozen permanently into what is called an “Intruder” pose. If I’m only carrying one of them I stuff it into the back “game pocket” of my turkey vest. If I’m bringing the whole crew, as I am sometimes apt to do, then I have a Redhead decoy bag that they all fit quite nicely into. I’ve had these decoys be completely ignored, and I’ve had them generate some interest, so I can’t make any claims at their efficacy. What I will say is that relative to a strutting tom decoy (which I have never hunted over so I have no opinions on that front) they were a cost-effective, three-for-the-price-of-one kind of deal. Which, based on the amount of calls I need to budget for, is a good thing.

So there you have it, as requested that (in two parts) is what I take with me into the forest and fields each spring. I know I may have skirted the “what would Shawn recommend?” portion of your question on most fronts, but that is only because I can’t say my choices in gear are any better than your own or that what I say will lead to success or failure in your turkey hunting career, especially since I’ve failed far more often than I’ve succeeded. But I looked good doing it.

Really, all I’ve done is find the things that work the best for me and then stuck with it, which is really my best advice for anyone doing any kind of hunting. So this, in the end, is a bit of a cop-out cliché I guess. Sorry…and good hunting.

turkey and turkey hunting

The Pines Gobbler

February 28, 2011 Shawn West Leave a comment

I do not know how old the Pines Gobbler was in 2009, but three or four years might have been a safe guess. I did not doubt that he has been chased by many hunters, a lot of whom were probably better than me, and for aperiod in 2009 he became my white whale.

I first saw him on the Saturday before the 2009 opener, while I was out scouting. He crossed a road fifteen yards from my parked car, and I could tell than that he was better than average. He was tall and his beard was thick and would push double digits; his spurs looked like they already had a good hook. But most distinctive of all is his gobble. After crossing the road that early April morning he began to sound off in a stand of hardwoods at every hen turkey, crow and blue jay. His was a full, throaty holler that is unmistakable to me now. He roosted in a stand of pines that no one I know had permission to hunt in. After flying down he’d ramble around an area of a few square miles, but almost nightly he would return to roost in the fobidden pine stand.

I saw him again on the second day of the 2009 season while I was driving home from an afternoon hunt with my cousin. The old tom was across the road from his roost pines and fifty yards out from a stand of trees in a field that my family owns. When we slowed down to look he began walking towards the field edge and out of sight. We devised a quick plan and looped the block to set up an ambush for him. Things looked good, but when we got to our spot he was gone. He did not gobble or putt, he had simply vanished. We called and called but he remained mute. I momentarily pondered whether or not we had been hallucinating.

Two weeks later I was in the same neck of the woods, this time with my brother. It had rained throughout the morning and no one had seen a gobbler, which made for an early end to the morning hunt. When the rain stopped we prepared to head out and our Dad told us that he had seen a big gobbler in the pasture immediately adjacent to that off-limits pine stand. We double-timed it to a spot parallel but distant from where the gobbler had been seen and slowly walked to set up. When we were not twenty yards into the woods he gobbled and seconds later he thundered again, closer. We rushed to set up and as I faced west my brother faced east. Webegan calling to him; every time he answered, he came closer and closer until only a single ridge stood between him and us. If he came directly over the ridge or around it to the west, I would have had a thirty yard shot. If he came around the east side, my brother would have had the same. The gobbler foiled us both when he grew bored and walked straight away from our set up. During his escape my brother had glimpsed a couple of hens with him. A tense, silent hour later we gave up, and circling the block by car we saw no sign of him. Again he had disappeared. I was not sure quite what we had done wrong, but it was now abundantly clear that this gobbler was going to be very tough to kill.

That night was spent at a memorial celebration for a hunting companion who had died before turkey season but I heard through others at the event that the gobbler had roosted in the pine stand again. I set my mind on harvesting him. Three and a half hours of fitful sleep stood between me and the day that I was determined to make the one when I would get the Pines Gobbler. The plan was to get in very early, get as close as I could without spooking the bird and then wait for him to fly down. Despite being so wily, he was laughably predictable and almost every morning he walked out of the pines, crossed the narrowest point of the pasture, and went into the woods I had hunted the day before with my brother. I made a promise to myself that I would not call once.

The morning began badly. While getting dressed, the button broke off of the only pair of hunting pants I had brought, forcing me to wear my belt extra tight. When I parked my car at 4:30am I accidentally set the car alarm off and it blared for twenty seconds while I fished for the keys that I had buried in my turkey vest. I was now positive that every bird in the township was spooked and that I may as well go back to bed, but when he gobbled on the roost I knew I had to try him. Ten minutes later, and well ahead of sunrise, I reached a finger of cedars that was directly south from his pine tree roost and I set to making myself invisible by hunkering back into the cedar edge so that only my gun barrel was poking out. Just over 100 yards away he gobbled constantly until fly down and it took all my energy to not yelp ever so softly on my diaphragm. I heard him hit the ground just before six and I steadied my shotgun on my knee.

For half an hour after fly down the woods were silent and nothing came into the pasture. I worried that he had heard me or my car alarm and simply gone the other way. A deep depression in the pasture stood between my set up and the gobbler’s roost, but it was the hen that I saw first. Initially I could only see her head bobbing up and down, but within twenty minutes she had fed to within five yards of my set up. I have never sat as as still as I did in that moment; if she busted me then it would have been game over early. As she walked past me into the woods the gobbler started sounding off again. Obviously while I was watching her, he had crossed into the pasture. At first I could only see the white of his head and the top of his tail fan as he came out of the low spot and up the hill in full strut. He was walking right in the hen’s tracks and it looked as though he would finally make a fatal mistake. Of course, that was the jinx.

At sixty yards he stopped and looked at me, or at least he looked in my direction. While he stood stock still for ten minutes I tried not to blink or breathe; my heart hammered in my ears and my stomach was in a knot. He took six more steps and stopped again, and again he stood as still and as silent as a statue for what seemed like an eternity. The morning sun shone on him and he was all bronze, gold and green iridescence. My legs cramped and my shoulders trembled at the strain of holding the gun at the ready; it had been almost two hours since this saga started and I had not moved more than six inches since I had sat down in the pre-dawn. Suddenly, he hammered a huge triple gobble and began to trot away, cackling, gobbling and leaving me stunned and shaking my head. I was emotionally gutted and as my two hour adrenaline rush subsided I realized I was physically exhausted. For forty-five more minutes I could hear him walking away and gobbling, and I wracked my brain for what I had done to spook the bird. Deep down though, I knew that there was nothing I could have done differently. It was simply that the Pines Gobbler was better than me that day. He intimately knew every stone, branch, and leaf in the area and even though I was hidden from the hen, I could not elude his wary stare. I paced off roughly how far away I thought he had been before he left the scene and estimated him to be 50 yards away. Should I have shot? Maybe. Does it matter now? Not really.

Defeated, I snuck out of the area and to my car. As I drove home I saw him one last time, standing on a hill a few lots north from where I had last seen him, and he looked as regal far out in the open as he did in the pasture. Where he stood there was no way to get to him and although I am a little ashamed to admit it, part of me just did not want to hunt him any more that morning anyhow. He had just beaten me soundly and my ego needed a rest.

My only hope was that he would make it through the rest of 2009 and the 2010 winter. I should have been careful what I wished for.